I’m looking forward to seeing one of your own poems about midlife. The counterweight to Prufrock…

You got to your “midlife entry” much earlier in life than I did! I tend to think of the thirties being “replete with very thou.”

If thou could’st empty thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,
And say, “This is not dead,”
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity,
That when He comes He says “This is enow
Unto itself–’twere better let it be,
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”

Sir Thomas Browne